The Queen’s Birthday

A very joyful Victoria Day to all our Canadian readers! A statuatory federal holiday, which was originally instituted to celebrate the birthday of Queen Victoria (May 24, 1819), Canadians celebrate the first ‘long weekend’ of summer which contains the Monday before May 24th. Hence, its colloquial term of ‘May 24’, which also has not so subliminal connections to a 24 pack of beer, a beverage often enjoyed during this time.

Canada is technically a ‘Dominion’, still under the governance of Her Majesty, the Queen, represented by the Governor-General, which explains why we have a holiday commemorating a queen, of whose name most elementary, and I dare say high school and university, students are scarcely aware. What this does mean is that we share in all the history, the common law, the rights and privileges, and, all in all, good governance of what was once ‘Merrie England’. which is not what it once was. But we will take the weekend.

Of course, we Catholics don’t really celebrate ‘weekends’, but Sundays and Holy-Days, morphed into ‘holidays’. This was the sixth Sunday of Easter, leading us ever-closer to Pentecost, the culmination of the fifty days after the Resurrection.

So we should pray for all sovereigns and their subjects, that we gain wisdom, and the peace that comes from on high.

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